Daily Recap — August 7

“All warfare is based on deception.”

— Sun Tzu

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A LOOK AT THE PRIMARIES

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We’ve had another Super Tuesday of primaries, this time in the states of Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, Washington and Ohio. Some of whom holding fascinating implications for the future while others were, well, meh.

Let’s go down the list and see what the word on the skreet is for each one.

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OHIO

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This was perhaps the most important of the races, as it gives us some indication of whether the much-hyped “blue wave” is actually coming to fruition. The answer: possibly, yes.

The special election in the traditionally deep-red 12th Ohio congressional district is too close to call as of this writing, with Republican Troy Balderson holding a narrow lead over Dim Danny O’Connor.

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Balderson leads by 0.9% with all early and election day votes counted in the district in the Columbus suburbs that Republicans have held for three decades. The Ohio secretary of state reported there are 8,483 outstanding absentee and provisional ballots left to count — much more than Balderson’s 1,754-vote lead. However, it’s tough to overcome a lead of that sort with only a few thousand oustanding votes to work with. The best the Dims can hope for is to get the margin down to .5%, which would trigger an automatic recount. But even that’s not likely. And even if they were to pull it off, they’re not likely to win the recount. Vote tallies very rarely change in any significant way after the second count.

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Balderson and Republicans are celebrating, confident that their lead will hold, but O’Connor did not concede the race. “We are in a tie ball-game,” he told the coach gathering at his election-night party.

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THE BAD NEWS:

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The Dims outperformed where they should be in that district. Both PDT and Mormon Mitt won this district by 11 points in their national elections, respectively.

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Dims need a net gain of 23 seats to take control of the House, and Republicans are currently defending dozens of districts that are more favorable to Democrats than Ohio’s 12th District, meaning we’re going to have to make a special effort to motivate and mobilize voters.

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Overall, this race matched several consistent trends in special elections and statewide contests since PDT took office: Turnout sagged in rural areas; surged in suburban areas; and swung in Dims’ favor in those suburbs when compared to the 2016 election results.

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To add insult to injury, this was a costly nail-biter for Republicans: The Congressional Leadership Fund super PAC and the National Republican Congressional Committee, the House GOP’s campaign arm, poured a combined total of more than $5 million into the race, compared to just $1 million from the Dim Congressional Campaign Committee. That means not only is there more enthusiasm on the Dims’ side, but that the GOP is having to manufacture the little enthusiasm we have.

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THE GOOD NEWS:

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While Dims have definitely over performed in districts that shouldn’t be close, it’s not necessarily attributable to some sort of unprecedented blue wave. Special elections such as the ones in Ohio often struggle to mobilize GOP voters, especially when the other side is in the minority and enjoying the natural headwinds that come with a crusade to regain power.

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Also, this race, much like the recent gubernatorial contest in Georgia, seemingly shows the big stick wielded by an official Trump endorsement. PDT tweeted this shortly after the results rolled in:

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“When I decided to go to Ohio for Troy Balderson, he was down in early voting 64 to 36. That was not good. After my speech on Saturday night, there was a big turn for the better. Now Troy wins a great victory during a very tough time of the year for voting. He will win BIG in Nov.”

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That is quite the turnaround, though it is worth noting that Republicans are notorious same-day voters, whereas Dims often bank votes ahead of time. Still, there had to have been a tangible effect in order to recover from that sort of hole at the onset.

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BOTTOM LINE:

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It’s not as good as they say, nor is it as bad. Yes, the GOP need to pick up the Get Out The Vote (GOTV) operation. We’ve got to engage our grassroots better. But don’t make the mistake of thinking that this is the beginning of the end and we’re all doomed. Republicans have sucked at special elections since the beginning of time and likely always will. The actual election day is likely to be a very different story.

And oh by the way….

No matter this special election’s outcome, Balderson and O’Connor are set for a rematch in November.

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Hope you enjoyed this #BigFat waste of time.

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KANSAS

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In another deep red state, one of my favorite human beings on Earth, Kris Kobach, is neck and neck with current Republican Gov. Jeff Colyer in the Kansas gubernatorial race.

Kobach, the Kansas secretary of state, built a national reputation as a conservative fighter for both tough immigration policies and strict voter ID laws. He was a supporter of the PDT before it was cool, advised him during the campaign and in the White House, and served as vice chairman of the now-disbanded presidential commission on election fraud.

Should Kobach win the primary, which he currently leads 40.8% to 40.5%, some RINO operatives fear he could lose the governorship to Dim this fall due to his “controversial” stance on actually having a damn border. The race could become further disrupted if Kansas City-area businessman Greg Orman makes it onto the November ballot. He submitted petitions yesterday with more than 10,000 signatures for what could become the most serious independent run for Kansas governor in decades. If he makes it on, he could provide refuge for the NeverTrumpers who hate Kobach but don’t want to vote for a Dim. The end result would be a split vote that would help the Dims, of course, since no Dims will vote for the third-party candidate.

What’s being underreported is the strength of Trump’s endorsement in yet another race.

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“He is a fantastic guy who loves his State and our Country – he will be a GREAT Governor and has my full & total Endorsement! Strong on Crime, Border & Military,” PDT tweeted on the eve of the election.

In Kobachs corner was that tweet. In Colyer’s corner was: a huge advantage in campaign cash, the endorsement of the National Rifle Association, and the backing of Kansas political legend, former U.S. Senator Bob Dole.

Colyer literally had everything a Republican in Kansas could want in a race….except Trump. And it looks like Trump is going to win anyway. Man, that’s gotta piss off the RINO tittybabies.

The Kansas race is one to look out for. If Kobach indeed holds on to win the gubernatorial nomination, it will be a battle of PDT vs the Establishment right in the heartland of America. It will be the strongest possible immigration advocate put to the test. It will be the soul of the Republican Party, defined.

Do NOT go soft on the borders, Kobach. Tune out the consultants. Tune out the media. Tune into the silent majority.

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MICHIGAN

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The main headline coming from Michigan is a downer for me, as it reflects defeat for the #CrazyBernie wing of the Dim party that we need to wreak havoc leading up to November.

In fact, Bernie and his new protege, crazy-eyed commie Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, personally visited Michigan to campaign for their favorite socialist Muslim, Abdul El-Sayed. Mohammad bin Losin’s finished a distant second in the Michigan Democratic governor’s primary despite a highly publicized appearance with Crazy Bernie just days before the election.

I guess Bernie can’t swing a race like The Donald.

That’s not to say that the Bernie wing isn’t having an effect. The way things are currently headed, they stand to have a Freedom Caucus-size element in Congress, except rather than freedom they want to take all your stuff and inject the government into every aspect of your life. That’s ample support to serve as a huge albatross around the corporate Dims like Nancy Pelosi who just want to get along in the usual Swamp way.

Make no mistake about it — there is still an internal war brewing within the Dim party that the media refuse to discuss.

Meanwhile, there was good news on the Trump front, as MAGA candidate John James, who happens to be OMG BLACK, won the Republican primary for the Senate over opponent Sandy Pensler fairly handedly.

James received 56.8% of the vote with 39% of precincts reporting compared to Pensler, who received 42.6% of the vote, according to The New York Times. The win comes after staunch support from PDT prior to the election, calling James “a potential Republican Star” and hinted that he would be the best candidate to take on incumbent Dim Sen. Debbie Stabenow in the Nov. 6 general election.

“Michigan needs a combat veteran and job creator in the U.S. Senate,” James said in a statement. “I don’t have a black message. I don’t have a white message. I have a Michigan message.”

“I’m a West Point graduate and a combat veteran who knows how to keep America safe because I have done it before,” James continued. “I am a job-creator who knows how to create economic opportunity because I have done it before. Washington has enough career politicians.”

THIS is an excellent candidate. The GOP needs more of him.

Give em Hell, CPT James! It’s an uphill climb but not at all impossible.

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WASHINGTON

Republican Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers was roughly tied for votes with Dim Lisa Brown in Washington’s 5th Congressional District., which isn’t great for Republicans, who generally perform well in that district.

What’s more problematic is in Washington, the top two vote-getters proceed to November. As of now, that could very well be two Dims.

But there is much campaigning yet to do and the traditionally GOP-friendly districts will still likely turn out in a few months. Still, I would feel better about Washington than most other states if I were a Dim.

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MISSOURI

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Welp, the showdown we were expecting looks as if it will soon come to fruition. Incumbent Dim Senator Claire McCaskill, who recently teamed up with the Daily Beast to fake a Russian cyber attack on her headquarters (just take my word for it) is expected to run against popular Republican State Attorney General Josh Hawley.

PDT stumped for Hawley late last month, calling him a “great young man” and urging supporters that Missouri needed him in the Senate “badly.”

Hawley’s victory in the GOP primary means PDT is perfect on the night in terms of candidates he endorsed. This will definitely put some wind behind The Donald’s sails going into campaign season, in which he plans to hold rallies as often as six days a week. That sort of schedule may be required in order to compensate for the lackluster Republicans who can’t inspire anyone to do a damn thing.

He’ll definitely be back in Missouri, #ThatICanTellYou. McCaskill is one of 10 Dim senators trying to defend their seats in states that PDT won in 2016. She is very beatable, and Dims can’t afford to have any of their seats flipped if they hope to flip control of Congress, especially the Senate.

Go Josh Hawley!

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BIG PICTURE

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Here’s what we learned from this latest go-round on the primary carousel:

1) A Trump endorsement is primary gold, even if it comes in at the last minute. Literally every single candidate endorsed by PDT won tonight. This worries GOP consultants because they feel they need more moderate candidates to win in the general. This is because they still don’t understand the mobilizing power of the immigration issue. Again tonight, Republicans named immigration as their #1 voting issue, coming in at 22%. The next most important issue was “miscellaneous” followed by a bunch of single-digit niche items. The message is clear, GOP: GROW A DAMN SPINE ON IMMIGRATION.

2) The #CrazyBernie faction of the Dims took losses everywhere they ran tonight, but it’s not all bad news. First off, these weren’t places where the “Democrat socialist” message resonates anyway, and the fact that they got anywhere between 20-40% in the midwest shows that we have an avenue by which to offset the enthusiasm gap. It’s simple — if Dims go full on centrist they’re going to have a tough time mobilizing the true energy behind their party, which belongs to Bernie at the moment. If we get only 5-10% to stay home out of disillusionment, coupled with increasing numbers of black voters that Dims never could afford to lose, that blue wave will crash before it ever comes to shore.

We’re gonna get a little stronger in the Senate and probably lose a few seats in the House. That’s how things look, folks. That is subject to change, however. Three months can be an eternity in politics.

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IS IT FINALLY HAPPENING?

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Everyone wants to know why PDT won’t just declassify everything already so we can get to the truth. I’ve always been of the mind that he’s holding back for a reason. Now, we may be getting an idea of why he isn’t conducting a blanket declassification: the documents are being revealed anyway.

Devin Nunes (Swamp Slayer – CA), the chairman of the House intelligence committee, said Republicans investigating the origins of the PutinGate probe “are getting closer and closer to having the information that we need.”

Hmmmm….interesting. It’s almost as if he knows the information before it’s revealed.

Nunes said the Justice Department is now finally producing documents subpoenaed by Republican committee members since last year. Still, they’re calling on PDT to declassify some of that information so the public can see why and how the FBI launched its investigation, beginning with the FISA warrant on Carter Page.

You can hear Nunes give his ominous warnings below:

A big key to this whole puzzle is Bruce Ohr who, if you’ll remember, has a wife named Nellie who worked for the pee-pee dossier firm Fusion GPS. Bruce wasn’t a janitor at the bureau. Rather, he was a high-ranking Justice Department official in the Obama administration, the #4 guy in all who once had an office just two doors down from Leakin’ James Comey and right beside Deep State Andy McCabe.

“Bruce Ohr is going to become more and more important,” Nunes told Sean Hannity last night.

“So the FBI interviewed Bruce Ohr at least a dozen times and put together reports. So once they fired (dossier author Christopher) Steele, which at that point they should’ve not been meeting with him anymore, but what they had is, they had Bruce Ohr, whose wife Nellie Ohr was working for Fusion GPS — was going to meet and still get the information from Christopher Steele as they were trying to verify this unverified dossier, or the Clinton dirt that was used to get the FISA warrant.”

Simply put, Bruce worked as the intermediary between the political oppo-firm hired by Hilary Clinton and the FB-friggin-I. There was an unholy alliance between the FBI and the Clinton campaign and the Ohrs brought them together.

If you’ll recall, FBI counterintel agent Cooter Srtzok testified to future Speaker of the House Rep. Jim Jordan that the FBI did receive “material” from Bruce Ohr that did indeed include elements of the pee-pee dossier. But he wasn’t able to elaborate much beyond that, because of, ya know, national security n’stuff. Yeah, that’s the ticket.

Basically, the dirt compiled by Steele, which is actually the product of Russian disinformation straight from the Russian government (I kid you not, the story is that ironic) went from Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson, to Nellie Ohr, to her husband Bruce Ohr, and then to the FBI, which ultimately used it as a reason to spy on the Trump campaign in what would be the political scandal of the century if we had a real free press in this country and American had attention spans beyond the latest episode of Dancing with the Stars..

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BIG PICTURE:

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This revelation regarding Bruce Ohr really isn’t breaking news to anyone who has been following this story. We’ve long been able to deduce that Bruce Ohr was the link between the FBI and the Clinton tabloid crew.

One lingering question is whether the Ohrs continued to deal with Steele even after the FBI officially reprimanded and “fired” him for speaking to the press about the dossier, which is laughable since the entire purpose of the dossier was to be leaked to the press. Newsflash, that’s what Fusion GPS does. They’re a smear firm. They find whatever dirt can be found, even if it must be embellished upon or invented from whole cloth, and disseminate it to media in order to bring someone down.

In this case, the dossier they were hawking was so full of crap that even the Fake News wouldn’t broadcast is during the election. Now just think about how much BS must be involved in order to for the legacy media to turn down an anti-Trump document. When CNN says, “this is too fake,” YOU’VE GOT A FRIGGIN PROBLEM.

The larger point, though, is that the Freedom Caucus gang seem to be very close to blowing the lid off this whole thing, and Nunes has a look on his face that suggests a huge turning of the tables is inevitable.

Personally, I believe PDT offered that information a long time ago during Nunes’s trip to the White House. I believe they know the whole story and are allowing the Dims to catch themselves in as many lies as possible before the veil is lifted.

That’s just my opinion. But bear in mind, I can be right as hell sometimes.

Like, insanely right.

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GATES ON THE HOT SEAT

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Things have gotten interesting in the travesty of justice known as the Paul Manafort trial.

Manafort’s attorney, Kevin Downing, suggested there was a side to Gates few had seen. “The secret life of Rick Gates,” he said.

This is where we get the popcorn, right?

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Gates admitted on the stand that he had a relationship for a period of time with someone in London and maintained an apartment there for two months when Downing pressed him to go ahead and fess up to stealing $3 million from Manafort.

The defense presented Gates with documents showing wire transfers for fake expense reports, including a $120,000 payment in 2015 from the Caribbean-based Global Endeavor, which Manafort controlled, to Blade LLC, a company Gates controlled.

Gates tried to manufacture crocodile tears as he explained to the jury that he fabricated the expenses because he was “living outside his means.”

“I regret it, clearly, and am taking responsibility for it,” he said.

“It’s embezzlement is it not?” Downing later pressed.

Gates said it was money he took from Manafort that was unauthorized, but the answer wasn’t enough for Downing.

“Why won’t you say it’s embezzlement?” he asked.

“It’s embezzlement,” Gates finally admitted.

That’s reminiscent of another criminal who was deemed “extremely careless” rather than “grossly negligent,” the latter being an explicit criminal statute and the former a harmless synonym. I’m trying to remember who used that tactic. I’m sure it will come to me soon.

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The very smart Manafort defense team, who I wish worked for PDT, highlighted the terms of the shady deal Gates received from King Bob for testifying in the case; a case THAT HAS NOTHING WHATSOEVER TO DO WITH RUSSIAN COLLUSION YET WAS SIGNED OFF BY FRAUD ROSENSTEIN ANYWAY. Gates was indicted on similar bank and tax fraud charges to Manafort, which were dropped after he agreed to plead guilty to lesser charges of conspiring against the U.S. and, more imortantly, aid in the squeezing of a high level Trump campaign employee in order to bring down the president.

As part of Gates’s plea agreement, prosecutors have agreed to recommend a sentence of fewer than five years on the reduced charges, which carry as many as 10 years in prison. They have also agreed not to oppose his request for probation.

But the plea deal is void if Gates is caught lying on the stand and Downing tried several times to trip him up, at one point asking if he told prosecutors he committed the same scheme of submitting reimbursement reports for personal expenses while working for PDT’s inaugural committee.

Downing asked the rather obvious question of why the jury should trust that Gates is telling the truth after all the lies he’s told and the crimes he’s committed. Gates, in turn, said he was there to tell the truth and accept responsibility. He dindu nuffin, he’s a good boy.

“I’m trying to change,” he said.

Downing asked Gates if he’s returned any of the money he stole from Manafort or his entities.

“I haven’t,” Gates replied, explaining that the money went into his personal accounts and was spent over the years.

Downing told Judge T.S. Ellis he expects to question Gates for another hour when the trial resumes for the seventh day tomorrow.

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BIG PICTURE:

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Gates is a proven weasel who will do and/or say anything to save his own skin. He’s almost as corrupt as the prosecutorial team who is shamelessly trotting him out as a star witness for 13-year old charges that have absolutely zilch to do with Mueller’s mandate.

Even the judge in the case has called it a shameful exercise in squeezing an associate of the POTUS, but since Fraud Rosenstein signed off on a memo essentially giving Bob Mueller unchecked power — hence why I call him “King Bob” — the judge’s hands are tied in terms of stopping the case from going forward.

My hope is that Manafort airs out the dirty laundry of all of Washington D.C. In any event, PDT will likely pardon him if convicted. That may not seem politically smart at the moment, but the Mueller name won’t carry the same weight it does now in just a short while. Truth always catches up to snakes, even ones with decorated chests.

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